1218 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



an exception in the case of bays which penetrate deep into the land 

 and are called gulfs. Many of these are recognised by immemorial 

 usage as territorial sea of the states into which they penetrate, not- 

 withstanding that their entrance is wider than the general rule for 

 bays would give as a limit to such appropriation. Examples are the 

 Bay of Conception in Newfoundland, penetrating forty miles into the 

 land and being fifteen miles in average breadth, which is wholly 

 British (2), Chesapeake and Delaware Bays, which belong to the 

 United States (3), and the Bay of Cancale, seventeen miles wide, 

 which belongs to France. Similar exceptions to those admitted for 

 gulfs were formerly claimed for many comparatively shallow bays 

 of great width, for example those on the coast of England from 

 Orfordness to the North Foreland and from Beechy Head to Dun- 

 nose, which, together with the whole of the British Channel and 

 various other stretches of sea bordering on the British Isles, were 

 claimed under the name of the King's Chambres (1). But it is only 

 in the case of a true gulf that the possibility of occupation can be so 

 real as to furnish a valid ground for the assumtion of sovereignty, 

 and even in that case the geographical features which may warrant 

 the assumption are too incapable of exact definition to allow of the 

 claim being brought to any other test than that of accepted usage, 

 real as to furnish a valid ground for the assumption of sovereignty, 

 now enjoyed over the littoral sea or certain gulfs is the remnant of 

 the vast claims which, as we have seen (2), were once made to sover- 

 eignty over the open sea, and which it is held have been gradually 

 reduced to a tolerable measure through such intermediate stages as 

 that of the King's Chambers; and the impossibility - of putting the 

 claim to gulfs in a definite general form may be thought favourable 

 to that view. None the less however the rights which are now ad- 

 mitted stand on a basis clear and solid enough to distinguish and 

 support them." 



734 Nys, " Le Droit International," published in 1904, vol. I, p. 

 446 ; United States extract, pp. 3 and 4 : 



"As to gulfs and bays, a distinction is made as to whether there is 

 a certain distance between the two shores. This distance is fixed at 

 ten marine miles and by certain international treaties it is carried to 

 twelve miles, according to one opinion, and according to an older 

 opinion the territorial line is fixed seawards at the double range of 

 cannon. When the distance between the two shores is less than one 

 of the distances just indicated, when, for example, the opening can 

 be dominated by the state, the gulf or bay is assimilated to ports, 

 coves, closed roadsteads, and harbors. The case is different when the 

 opening exceeds ten or twelve mil?s or the total double range of 

 cannon, following the theories to which we have alluded and the 

 development of which we shall trace in discussing the littoral sea." 



Oppenheim, " International Law," vol. I, pp. 246, 247, and 248 : 



" It is generally admitted that such gulfs and bays as are enclosed 

 by the land of one and the same riparian State, and whose entrance 

 from the sea is narrow enough to be commanded by coast batteries 

 erected on one or both sides of the entrance, belong to the territory of 

 the riparian State even if the entrance is wider than two marine 

 leagues, or six miles. 



